Miðfjörður Church

I’m really quite taken with Icelandic churches. The smallest of hamlets will have a church, many created from the same set of architectural drawings it seems. This particular church was on the banks of Miðfjörður in the northwest of Iceland.

24mm f/8 1/160 sec. ISO-50

It had been our plan to tour the Westfjords during our first few days in Iceland but the weather beat us unfortunately. It was touch and go whether we’d make it to the northwest at all following the journey I wrote about in my first post from Iceland which you can see here.

Arriving in the northwest we were treated to three days of near hurricane force winds. Gusts of wind were making it impossible to open the door to our cottage and when parking the car, I had to park broadside to the wind so that Chris could get out on the lee side and then turn the car around to allow me to get out.

It was crucial to get this right; the best that could happen if you got it wrong was you simply couldn’t open the car door. The worst was a real risk of having the car door ripped from your hands and blown open causing a great deal of damage. This is the most common type of damage that occurs with hire cars in Iceland apparently.

For the two nights we stayed in Hvammstangi, a red alert was in force. This meant the wind was gusting at speeds greater than 27 metres per second. That’s a force 11 on the Beaufort scale, a wind that is very difficult to stand up in. The advice from the Icelandic road agency is that when a red alert is in force, driving is hazardous and vehicles of all kinds risk being blown off the road. Thankfully we didn’t get blown off the road but with snow and ice covering the roads, it really didn’t make sense to travel too far afield. These were the conditions we encountered just a few minutes after taking this photograph. You can hear the snow flakes hitting the windscreen they were driven with such force.

I had wanted to revisit Arnastapi and Snaefellsness where this picture of another very similar Icelandic church was taken but the sadly the weather was against us..

I’m absolutely shattered Sue, I’ve slept 12 and 13 hours the last couple of nights with a couple of hours napping thrown in. My eyes are playing up, I’m stiff and sore beyond belief but it was all worth it! :-)

These solitary churches are so starkly beautiful – especially the way they’re depicted in your amazing photos and imagine that they can withstand the kinds of winds you’re describing! I was fascinated with the single white cross in the graveyard – was there one lonely grave or don’t they have markers on every one? That video set my teeth on edge – yuk to that weather although we get our share here in winter too.

No mozzies Sylvia :-) “Entomologist Erling Ólafsson is surprised that mosquitoes have neither settled in Iceland nor the Faroe Islands while they exist in the island states’ neighboring countries. There is no definite explanation as to why these two countries remain mosquito-free.” Iceland Review Online

Loved those little churches ! One in particular passed me by I’m not sure how that happened – scrutinising the map – or more likely swigging from my Thermos :-D I’m sure you have it in your collection ChillB .
This account of the conditions has reminded me of the slight trepidation I felt after hearing about it first time round as we were preparing to pack :-o

I love the red roofs making them stand out so well, espcially in the snow.. I was in two minds as to whether to forward the links to those videos I’d uploaded to Dropbox, before you made the journey north Poppy, but I could see that conditions were calming down and would have eased considerably by the time you arrived.. That’s not to say they didn’t deteriorate again later but you were committed by that stage! :-D x

It was extreme but I’m glad I experienced these conditions. It was all new to me. The UK is so temperate in comparison! We were warned when we picked our car up about the wind. As I said in the post, wind causes more damage to hire cars than anything else..

I wonder of those churches were all built during one long construction road trip around Iceland. I didn’t realize They had such strong winds – my goodness! That last photograph, the one of the church at Arnastapi and Snaefellsness, has such a wild look to it. Beautiful!

Thank you very much Dave! The wind really was quite something. When I first checked the Icelandic Road Agency website. I couldn’t understand why they had wind predictions on all the roads. Now I understand the need for it! :-)

Those bright red church roofs make a lovely contrast to the moody skies, don’t they. As for your holiday weather, can you imagine what would happen here if we encountered conditions such as those here? Mind you up in the hills you can get them, not usually quite as ferocious winds, but good blizzard conditions nonetheless. I’m guessing you will be an expert in winter driving back at your home now, just have to wait for some snow ;-)

The Icelanders drive around as if there isn’t any snow or ice covering the roads at all Sonja. It took a few days but I got used to driving like that too. Tyres make a big difference of course and I suppose for the odd day when we do get snow, it wouldn’t be worth changing them that said, it is laughable how much chaos a little bit of snow will cause here having seen the way a lot of snow is handled in Iceland. :-)

Thank you Edith! By the end of the trip I was really quite used to driving in conditions like these. It was a bit of a shock and a challenge on the second day though not having ever experienced anything like it. :-)

Join me on the Journey..

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 29,072 other followers

Search

Copyright Notice

All images and text on this blog are subject to copyright. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is not allowed without permission. Please ask if you'd like to use an image for your personal use. Commercial users can contact me through the Photoshelter link.
The images on this site have an embedded and trackable digital watermark.